


Until Death Do Us Part

by frubeto



Series: Renoventures [4]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Moving On, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29607498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frubeto/pseuds/frubeto
Summary: After a war, ten months on an asteroid, 930 years, and some bad news about her wife's home planet, Jett finally gets her chance of closure.
Relationships: Jett Reno & Sylvia Tilly, Jett Reno/Jett Reno's Wife
Series: Renoventures [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095290
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Until Death Do Us Part

**Author's Note:**

> Expanding from that one scene in [Looking Back To the Future](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28433913), but I did my best to make this standalone.

“Commander Reno?”

She barely managed to suppress a groan that would have echoed all through the Jefferies tubes. She’d been expecting this.

“Captain,” she acknowledged.

And waited for him to continue, staring at the wall in front of her. But despite the distance and material between them, she could practically hear his hesitation. Well, either he’d talk or he’d leave, she was not crawling back out of here until this circuit did what she wanted it to.

Eventually, Saru seemed to realize that as well.

“I have been informed that you hold the status of… citizen. On Mirillia VI,” he started.

Certainly one way of addressing it. Slightly more tactful than  _‘Hey, remember how your dead wife, who you’re still technically actively mourning because Starfleet put her planet under General Order of No Contact, gives you a diplomatic advantage on this mission we’ve been sent on and d’you maybe wanna put in a good word for us?’._

She huffed.

“And apparently that’s now a criminal offense, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go hollering it about.”

She closed the panel she’d been working on with a loud clang.

“Captain,” she added.

Damn, if Denise knew about this she’d be livid. Saru was lucky she’d always been the reasonable one in the relationship. And had a problem to fix to keep her mind occupied. She used her free hand to comm Stamets.

“Try it now.”

“Same as before,” his voice sounded almost immediately, “did you even do anything?”

Jett didn’t dignify that with a response, and instead went back to work. Opened the panel again. Cut the power supply.

“As you may have heard,” Saru continued – and sometimes she was still amazed at his tone doing the audio equivalent of walking on eggshells – “we will be jumping to the planet shortly, and I was wondering if-”

She held her open hand out the opening.

“Hyperspanner?”

There was a silence.

Then, after a few long seconds in which he probably considered and rejected the interpretation of insubordination, something hit her palm that was, on inspection, the tool requested.

“I was wondering if you had any advice on how best to approach them.”

Hah.

She checked the tool’s settings and turned her attention to the secondary coil.

“Last time I was on that planet it was peaceful,” she said. “Sure as hell not a threat to me or the Federation, so I don’t know what you expect me to tell you.”

Finishing up, she closed the panel, turned the power back on, and hit her badge.

“Stamets, if it’s not working now, I’ll assume you’re trying to shit me.”  
  


“Commander…”

“Don’t try to write your incompetence off as mine,” Stamets replied, and then the line went quiet as he presumably went over to a console to check.

“It’s working, you’re in luck.”

And like that the connection was ended, and with nothing better to do now, Jett sighed, and pushed herself out of the Jefferies tube with a grunt, to face Saru, still waiting.

It wasn’t his fault, she knew. He probably had no idea. Mirillia had never been very interested in sharing their culture, and he was as much as her trying to figure out how a people partly descendant from Starfleet officers – the crew of the crashed USS Soyuz – would suddenly turn against them.

“My guess is as good as yours, Sir,” she reiterated, locating her equipment behind him. “But maybe take your First Officer with you.”

If they were at all the same people she knew, at least they’d appreciate her.

“Tilly?”

He turned as she circled around him.

“May I ask why?”

Tools dropped back where they came from, she pulled up her PADD. 

“Have you _seen_ her ESP rating?”

Saru made a clicking noise and nodded in understanding.

Messages. Ensign Molina needed needed help on Deck 4. Rause was in sickbay again. She’d made the mistake of dealing with his mess last time, so Deck 4 it was.

“Will you also be joining us, then?”

She stopped, hand midair, and threw him an incredulous look.

“You’re asking?”

“I was under the impression I would not be able to stop you, should you wish to,” he replied, with what she was almost sure was a smirk.

Yeah, he had a point there.

*

Doctor Pollard smiled politely as Jett passed her on the way to the ready room, and she returned the greeting. She was standing with Burnham, discussing, as far as she could make out, the planet’s unique atmosphere, probably already planning for a landing party. Jett rolled her eyes. A little overconfident, that.

But then the doors to the ready room were in front of her, and she carefully stopped just outside sensor range to collect herself. Not like she hadn’t been doing that for the last few hours. There was no way of knowing what she’d be faced with on the other side, if this would be her one opportunity to find peace, or just another disappointment. 

No way but forward.

So she let out a breath and sauntered through the doors, an excuse for her delay already on her lips, something about being held up in engineering – and immediately dying there when the sheer psychic presence in the room forced her to her knees.

  
“Jett!”

*

“ _We could head to Risa,” Denise suggested, idly tracing a pattern on her ribcage._

_She hm-ed._

“ _And spent half our time in a tiny crammed shuttle?”_

_Not her idea of a good time. But Denise insisted._

“ _Think about it,” she said, and rolled on top of her for emphasis. “Palm beaches. An actual sun. A comfy bed. Acceptable temperatures guaranteed.”_

_She seemed taken by the idea. And with her growing list of perks, corresponding images danced in front of Jett’s mind’s eye, framed in such a way she was sure they weren’t coming from her own brain. Damned touch telepathy. Denise was projecting heavily, probably not even consciously, and Jett was too sleepy to try and shield._

“ _No dress code regulations,” she continued, accompanied by a flash of a variation of different colored dresses that threatened to give Jett a headache._

_She grimaced. Their connection had gotten stronger after their second wedding, and she still hadn’t gotten used to that._

“ _Saltwater,” Denise added, clearly alluding to something, but before Jett could figure out what it was, the sudden feeling of being submerged in water pulled her under like a wave, muffled weightlessness confusing her senses, and she gasped, blindly reaching for Denise’s wrist to shove her off._

“ _Get out,” she managed, eyes squeezed shut, hoping that she would understand, and thankfully, after a confused beat, any limps touching her were quickly withdrawn._

_Finally, her head was silent. She took a few deep breaths, trying to dispel the lingering effects, and Denise apparently focused on her shielding, because when her hand reconnected with her side, there was nothing else coming with it. Still Jett flinched._

“ _Better?”_

“ _Yeah.”_

“ _Talk to me?”_

“ _It just makes me dizzy sometimes,” she explained. “Not in a good way.”_

_The hand went up to her chest, still the only point of contact between them now._

“ _I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”_

_Oh, she’d been thinking quite a lot, actually, Jett thought, but the worried face above her made her keep that to herself._

“ _It’s fine. We’ll figure it out,” she reassured instead._

_First, though-_

“ _Will it be terribly unromantic if I throw up now?”_

*

“Commander Reno?”

She blinked, and put the arm she had reflexively thrown up back down again, the gesture one she and her wife had eventually worked out for moments where she needed her thoughts strictly to herself.

“I’m fine,” she said, before she was really sure of that herself, and let herself be pulled to her feet.

Tilly was in front of her, looking worried, Pollard at her side, having probably jogged back up to her when she’d seen the commotion, switching to Doctor Mode. She grimaced. What an image that must have made. But the pain was still radiating through her head as if she had run straight into a brick wall, so she deemed her reaction entirely appropriate.

“My apologies,” an unfamiliar voice cut in, “I did not know you were injured.”

“Injured?”

Jett waved them off as she was dragged over to an armchair. This was not going the way she had wanted it to. But sitting down was actually quite the relief, even if it came with a medical scanner in her face, and she allowed herself to sink into the upholstery for a moment, massaging her temple. Shit, she hadn’t known it was that bad. 

There was nothing Pollard could do, though – if the tech even picked up on anything at all. And she would notice that soon enough and back off, opting instead for standing and staring disapprovingly at her, Jett imagined. She could live with that.

By the time Jett was alert enough again to take in her surroundings, she found Pollard sitting on a couch near her, and the conversation at the table having progressed to nothing short of open hostility.

The woman in the middle, probably head of the Mirillian government, was trying her best to cut the meeting short, while the Soyousian to her left was at least politely arguing their point, and the guy to the right, of a species she hadn’t seen before, but seemed to be sharing the planet now, already wasn’t listening anymore.

“ _Why are we still wasting out time here?”_ he asked the Mirillian under his breath, uncaring that he was interrupting an officer speaking. _“Just tell Captain Potato Head he can stuff it, and we can go do some actual work.”_

Jett turned to stare at him.

Then at Saru.

And only when the latter asked nicely for everyone to use a language the universal translator could work with, did her brain relay the information that it hadn’t been Standard he’d been talking in. Huh. She honestly didn’t know if that made it better or worse.  But she wouldn’t stand for it.

“That won’t be necessary, Captain,” she piped up.

Now was as good a time as any to reveal her real reason for being here, she gathered, and the guy had just given her the perfect opening. She waited until all eyes were on her, and then switched to a language she hadn’t spoken in forever, but that still felt like home on her tongue despite the disuse. 

“ _I can understand them just fine.”_

Everyone went still.

“I’d be happy to translate,” she added in Standard, and reveled in the expression on his face turning first embarrassed, then angry.

“How dare you!” he exploded, leapt out of his chair, hands flat on the table in the universal stance of an authority figure intimidated. 

Jett remained where she was.

“No outsider is allowed to-!”

Wow, this one was really slow up the uptake, huh?   
  
“V’rensan!”

It was the Soyousian, in the end, who got him to back off, and sit back down, before standing herself, and walking around the table with soft wonder in her eyes.

“You are… a child of Mirillia?”

Not exactly how she’d put it.

“Nah,” she said. “I married in.”

And getting the marriage recognized on both planets had definitely demanded some effort on her part, so there was no small amount of pride involved. She got up.

“We were tied under the Mirillian sun.”

“But she’s a Starfleet officer!”

Well, she could understand the disbelief. With the way things were right now, she didn’t even know if these kind of things still happened at all, or even specifically in that part of the Soyousian region where her accent had once unmistakably placed her.

She shook her head.

“I’m really not interested in any of this, I’m only here for personal reasons.”

The Soyousian inclined her head, having put together the pieces.

“Your injury. Your tied?”

“Mh,” Jett confirmed, lips pressed together. “Died and left a mess up here.” 

She tapped the side of her head for emphasis, and out of the corner of her eye caught movement from Pollard, probably throwing her a look she could imagine the meaning of.

“We can of course arrange for a healer,” the Soyousian offered.

“Chancellor…”

She turned.

“Is it not by your law that she is a citizen of this planet?” she asked sharply, cutting the interruption off, and there was no arguing about that.

With a satisfied smile she faced Jett again, a hand outstretched.

“May I?”

Jett stared at the hand for a moment. She really didn’t need someone going through her head again right now. Even if her tone with her was gentle. Her voice soft enough to almost make her believe she’d accept a no even without any good reason, despite convention, simply because she’d be uncomfortable with it. Thankfully, Jett also had a better reason. She shook her head.

“I can’t.”

She held the hand with her wedding band up in explanation.

“ _I still carry her.”_

There was a beat. The Mirillian delegation seemed to take a collective sharp breath in and straightened up, uncomfortable. The Soyousian took half a step back.  _Good._ At least here that still seemed to hold some meaning.

“Starfleet didn’t exactly make it easy to fly over for a personal visit,” she added for good measure, throwing an apologetic look over to Saru, whose careful attempts at diplomatic relations she might be damning more than they already had been, but it wasn’t even a lie. Starfleet had done it’s best trying to keep her busy, and too occupied to even think about properly working through her grief. But she was ready now. She had everything packed in her quarters. She was not missing this opportunity that might well be the last in her lifetime. She was Starfleet, but she also had a duty to her wife, and to herself.

“Of course,” the Soyousian eventually agreed, and Jett breathed a grateful sigh. 

“Tell me where, and I will see to it that you are well received.”

“Thank you.”

*

“I’m sorry,” Tilly was saying from somewhere behind her. “That Saru made me come. I know this is probably something you’d rather do on your own. I don’t want to be intruding.”

Jett waved her off without slowing her pace. She honestly couldn’t care less at this point. They made it to the surface. The only thing separating her from where she needed to be was the sand, slippery beneath their feet, slowing them down while the traditional robes gave her the rest.

“It’s _fine,”_ she said. Besides, “I told you this needs two people. Who would I have chosen instead, the mushroom boy?”

She did turn around then to see the small smile on Tilly’s lips. Yeah, she couldn’t imagine that going well either.

“Alright,” Tilly eventually cut their musings short, stopping and pulling up her PADD to get down to business. “I’ve got your vital signs right here, and Doctor Pollard on speed dial if anything happens. Are you sure you’ll be okay without the respirator?”

Jett sighed.

“I married here without one. I know the effects. I can handle it.”

It wasn’t like the Doc hadn’t insisted on one anyway, to activate if things got messy. A fact she was planning to fully take advantage of.

“Fine.”

And so they set moving again. 

The promised Soyousian healer joined them along the way, an imposing figure, but after Jett made the effort of greeting her with the necessary respect, she let herself fall back and left them to it.

Jett liked her already.

Sooner than she would have liked, however, the sand under her feet began to turn to gravel, and the mountains in the distance, the planet’s rings in the south, and the sun burning hot from her right, slowly aligned to form a scene etched into her memory for eternity.

She faltered.

It had been a day much like this one, a clear sky, the smell of fresh strawberries in the air as the water gently gurgled against the shore. The beaming smile of her wife pulling her with her.

The air had left her lungs and wouldn’t return until she forced herself to take a shaky breath in again. She gritted her teeth. She could do this.

Despite the familiarity of the place, things had changed, naturally, over the course of a millennia, and she tried to focus on those instead, to keep herself moving. The trees on the other side of the river were new. The small bridge they were now on probably hadn’t survived 900 years without some serious maintenance. The railing was different. The air felt thicker, somehow, too, but that might be chalked up to circumstances.

Jett sighed, and stopped at the point about a third over the water, waiting for Tilly to catch up with her. Best to get this over with.

“...Jett?”

“This is it,” she explained, nodding at her to come stand opposite her. 

“Hold out your hands.”

Tilly did, wordlessly. 

She had given her a quick rundown of her part in this, so she just watched patiently as she neatly folded the sweater she’d been carrying into a square in her hands. It was Denise’s. Though it had stayed with her for a long time now. She had accidentally taken it with her to the Hiawatha after their last meeting, kept it, after the news of her death, and then after the crash, held on to it, even if it had been lightly singed and dirtied beyond hope at that point. It was hers, and she wouldn’t have been allowed to get rid of it even if she’d been able to.

“And I just drop it?” Tilly whispered when she was done.

She nodded.

“There’s a dematerialization filter a few meters downstream,” she assured her.

That was if the acid didn’t deal with it until then. But the look on her face told her that hadn’t actually been her concern.

“I-”

Jett smiled softly. Usually Tilly’s role would have been to make things easier on her, taking the burden of that last physical letting go literally from her hands, reminding her of what was to do if she started having second thoughts, but instead she could see she was going to question her determination every step of the way. Maybe that was the natural progression. But she had already been prepared to give these things back when she’d collected them from the various corners of her quarters.

She took her wrists in her hands.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I still have all the holos. All the letters she sent me. I still have all our memories. This is just the stuff that belongs to _her.”_

Tilly nodded, and when she let go of her, dutifully went over to the railing and, with one last look back at her, let it fall.

When she returned, Jett went to her pocket for the small pouch of other things she still unrightfully owned.

There was Denise’s badge, sent to her by Starfleet with some hollow expression of condolences, hitting Tilly’s palm and then the surface of the water with a splash. Followed by a stray earring she had mysteriously found among her things, her spare hairbrush, and various Andorian Scrabble pieces that had been lost on the Hiawatha until she’d had to strip all accessible room for parts.

Which wasn’t much, if she thought back to the only other time she had witnessed this, Denise standing with her mother in a similar place, Jett’s presence already needed for transport reasons alone. But separation by space, war, and time did that to people, she guessed.

One thing left.

Tilly was in front of her again, waiting patiently.

“Anything else?” she asked.

Jett nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to move yet. This one was different. She kept her eyes focused somewhere over Tilly’s shoulder in the trees, and grimaced. Swallowed against a sudden onslaught of emotion.

Then brought her hands up in front of her to pull off her wedding ring.

She hadn’t even been wearing it, except for special occasions, or to talk sense into certain back-from-the-dead Starfleet doctors, her hands always in the metaphorical bowels of the ship, or for ten months in the very literal bowels of officers, where losing it would be bad news. No, she’d always kept it somewhere safe, in her quarters, or a pocket, or even on a chain around her neck. But now there was no more need to.

She pressed the ring into Tilly’s hand, and carefully closed it around it, holding on. She’d known this would be harder than everything else, and it didn’t help that when she glanced at Tilly again, she was gaping.

“Jett…”

“It’s hers.”

“But-”

She squeezed her hand a little and finally managed to face those big blue eyes staring at her.

“It’s just a piece of metal,” she said, as casually as she could make it, even if the wetness around her eyes might betray her anyway.

Unlike the rest of the stuff, this ring had always been with her. A reminder. A constant in this chapter of her life as much as her wife had been.

A chapter that was over.

She let her hands fall away from Tilly’s, and shooed her off.

This was it. She was ready. A sudden calm was settling over her as she counted Tilly’s steps towards the edge, replacing the dead at the expected question.

“Are you really sure…?”

She was. She didn’t know when or why it had happened, and she hadn’t been a minute ago, but she was. Her heart was still beating rapidly in her chest, but she knew she knew she’d be fine.

She took a deep breath and faced her.

“Drop it.”  
  


“Okay,” Tilly breathed, and they both watched the thin band roll out of her palm, starting the plummet to its inevitable end, Jett losing sight of it as it continued its fall out of her view, until the soft ‘ _plop’_ of its landing reverberated through her like an electric shock, making her squeeze her eyes shut for a second.

It was over as quick as the sting of a hypospray though, and when she blinked them open again, the numbing relief of it already slowly setting in, Tilly was still looking out over the water. A single tear rolling down her cheek revealed when she turned back. Always feeling too much for other people. It pulled at an entirely part of Jett’s heartstrings, and she gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile as she sent her off, then dropped to her knees.

*

“ _This is the last time I’m getting on my knees for you,” Jett said, already on the floor tying the first clasp of her wife’s favorite sandals._

“ _What, were you not planning on eating me out later?”_

“ _I’m an old woman.”_

_Denise scoffed._

“ _You’re an engineer. You spend half the day on your knees.”_

“ _And I’m not laying a finger on you while you’re wearing a murder weapon,” Jett continued, undeterred._

_She had made her opinion on the giant-sequined dress abundantly clear._

“ _Oh, come on.”_

“ _You look like the rainbow fish had a child with a chandelier.”_

“ _Exactly!” Denise agreed excitedly, apparently mistaking that for a compliment._

_Jett rolled her eyes dramatically and moved on to the other foot, while Denise continued musing._

“ _Now if I could move in it, it’d be perfect.”_

“ _It’d be perfect if I could look at you without being blinded.”_

“ _By your own radiant reflection?”_

“ _No, because you’re a walking disco ball.”_

_There was a sharp intake of air above her._

“ _Oh, that’s bold coming from someone wearing whatever the fuck that is.”_

“ _It’s high fashion,” Jett deadpanned._

_Denise snorted._

“ _I’m sure somewhere it is, honey.”_

_And while the endearment put a smile on her face as she was finishing her task, she still couldn’t help herself pointedly checking her hair in her wife’s dress when she got up._

_It earned her a laugh, and a shove, and next thing she knew she was pressed up against the wall, Denise’s face centimeters from hers._

“ _You’re impossible.”_

_But even through the fabric she could clearly feel what was really going through her head, and when she leaned in to kiss her lips and lean their foreheads together, it intensified, flooding all other senses, and made her float a little. She smiled._

“ _I love you, too.”_

_*_

“What happens now?” Tilly asked quietly, after she had joined the healer by a collection of rocks a little way off. 

They were both watching Reno, who had started speaking in a language she didn’t understand, probably reciting some Mirillian text, her kneeling form in the dark red robes looking almost picturesque in this place.

The healer turned to her with an assessing look, but straightened back up without comment.

“Untying,” she explained. Then paused, until Tilly almost thought that was all the information she was going to get. But she continued.

“If the dead are still tied with the living, neither will find peace.”

Tilly nodded. 

“They meet again here, and by the time your friend steps back onto land, she will have freed them both to move on.”

Wait.

“‘ _Meet’_ as in...?”

She looked up. Not like she hadn’t had her own fair share of encounters with life after death – every time she went for a medical checkup, in fact – but there  _was_ a certain hallucinogenic quality to the gases around. The healer hummed.

“What difference does it make?” she said, apparently knowing exactly where her mind was going.

Tilly closed her mouth. Not much of one to Reno, she supposed. Although she had seen her sway a little when she was with her, too proud to reach for the railing. She hoped she really did know what she was doing.

She was about to bring up her vitals again, just to be sure, when the healer spoke again.

“She might also be apologizing. The text she chose…” she trailed off. “It has been a while, since the death?” she then ventured.

Well, depending on how one looked at it… Tilly bit the inside of her cheek, searching for an answer that wasn’t a lie. From the Soyousian standpoint… had Reno’s wife been waiting for 930 years here for her, to set her free? Had Reno sacrificed this for their jump to the future? Had Discovery not been sent here, would she ever have been able to-

“Yeah,” she remembered to say. “It’s been… years.”

The healer nodded.

“I have never heard it spoken before,” she admitted. “And with such honesty. It is usually reserved for… severe cases.”

Tilly swallowed. Fuck.

*

Concentration was getting more and more difficult.

The air was thick in her lungs, and the ancient words heavy on her tongue, and she abandoned them for a few steady breaths as she focused on their bond, reaching out the way she’d been taught to. 

Remembered quiet nights on the couch watching bad holos. 

Boring stuck-up Starfleet events only made bearable by each other’s presence. 

Burnt lasagna they were both too proud not to eat.

It hurt, and she was breathing raggedly by now, fully aware that if  _someone_ wasn’t showing soon, this would get critical, but then finally,  _finally,_ she heard the gravel crunch beneath tentative footsteps in front of her.

Her breath hitched. It almost sent her into a coughing fit, but she managed to get herself under control, and then opened her eyes. To see her wife. Crouching down in front of her.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, honestly, but suddenly communication was as easy and nonverbal as it always had been between them. One look full of a million words.

A pair of raised eyebrows saying  _‘What are you even doing here, you never believed in this.’_

An answering smirk and a half shrug that said  _‘Well, I’ve just been proven wrong, haven’t I.’_

And then that smile, the one that meant  _‘You’re an idiot and I love you.’,_ and as if that hadn’t been enough, Denise chose that moment to reach out and cup her cheek, the scent of her filling her nose, and any composure she might have still had went out the window. She’d thought she had long since left the days of spontaneously bursting  out crying behind her, but apparently, this warranted a comeback. There was nothing she could do about the tears on her face.

“You need to breathe, Jett.” 

She nodded, reluctantly, squeezing her eyes shut, and hit the respirator with more force than strictly necessary to activate it, mostly so she couldn’t talk herself out of it for stupid reasons. As she tried to get some rhythm back to her breathing, Denise’s thumb moved to gently wipe the tears from her cheek, doing nothing to help, and only succeeded in increasing their flow. Jett pressed her lips together in a smile and just waited for the wave of emotion to wash over her and ebb off again.

Then she reached up to take the hand from her face into her own. 

Held it. 

Brought the tangle of fingers to her lips to kiss. 

Dropped them to lay idly between them. 

She wasn’t sure how to go about this part.

“What do I do?” she asked.

Denise only smiled fondly at her.

“You already have,” she said, and in a way Jett knew it was true. 

“I’m just hanging around ‘cause I like you.”

Well.

“Lucky me.”

“Mh-hm,” Denise agreed, and they smiled at each other, sitting on the ground like schoolkids, holding hands and reveling in each other’s company, trying to commit the moment to memory. Silent despite the importance of the moment, since there was nothing on their minds the other didn’t already know.

Until eventually, Denise declared it was time, and got up, took her head and pressed a kiss to her forehead, and with closed eyes and beating heart Jett listened to her footsteps retreat, and when she was ready to open them again, there was nothing but the scenery in front of her.

She sighed and got to her feet, patted the dirt from her robes, muttered one last 

“Love you.”

turned, and left.

*

“ _If I die,…”_

_Jett shook her head and sat up to look around for a hair tie, finding one on the small cupboard behind her._

“ _You’re not dying.”_

“ _If I die, I want you to remember me as I was.”_

_She snorted, lightly combing through the hair she was holding with her fingers. Denise didn’t even object._

“ _I warned you about the effects on humans.”_

_As had their waiter. Tellarite cuisine was always to be taken with a careful eye on the list of ingredients. Everyone knew that._

“ _...not human.”_

_Focused on twisting the hair into a ball, Jett only hummed in response to that, then motioned for her to hold still as she secured it with the tie._

“ _Human enough, apparently.”_

_Denise leaned her cheek against the cool ceramic of the toilet to throw a look at her. But soon she seemed to remember she’d been trying to make a point._

“ _Please do not remember me with my face hanging over a toilet seat,” she continued, her voice now starting to grow hoarse._

_Jett let a hand fall onto her shoulder._

“ _Remember how beautiful I looked at our earth wedding. Remember my promotion ceremony, for all I care. Or remember how you fell in love with me on first sight when we met.”_

_Now, the last one was a straight up lie, but Jett let it pass._

“ _I love you no matter the state you’re in,” she said, “you know that. And I’m gonna remember this just to spite you.”_

“ _Well, I hope future you will be glad to have the sound of me retching memorized for eternity.”_

_Jett leaned back with a grand gesture._

“ _I’ll say I’ll always remember the night we spent on the bathroom floor in our pajamas because she didn’t listen to me.”_

“ _I hate you,” Denise said, but chuckled._

_Then she moved over to pull herself up with the help of Jett’s shoulder and the toilet seat, ruffling her hair when she’d found her balance._

“ _Sink?” Jett asked._

“ _Yeah.”_

“ _Let me help?”_

_And after a vague agreeing noise, Jett got on her feet again to half carry her to the other side of the bathroom again._

_*_

Tilly giggled.

“Sounds like you were a great pair.”

Jett huffed, a small smile on her lips, even if it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Yeah. We were.”

The grating sound her teacup made as she rotated it on the saucer echoed in the otherwise empty mess hall.

“Can I ask…” Tilly started after a beat, “...did this help? I mean, are you feeling better?”

She considered it. She did feel… lighter now. And after the Soyousian healer had played a joyful round of Tetris in her head, things were certainly looking better in there. She searched for the right words to describe it. Well, speaking of Tetris.

“You know that Vulcan game where you’re trying to make a bunch of sticks be a ball?”

Tilly smiled.

  
“Yeah. Kal-toh. Michael showed it to me once. I’m terrible at it.”

  
“Mh. Imagine that’s my brain.”

She raised the cup to take another sip of her tea. It had grown cold, and stale, but that was fine, since it’s only reason for existence was to give her something to do.

“And now it’s a perfect icosidodecahedron?”

“No,” she said, suspecting the question was mostly Tilly being delighted at getting to use the word. “But she moved some pieces around, and I can figure out the rest on my own.”

“Good. That’s good.”

They fell into silence after that, but a beep from Tilly’s badge eventually caused them both to look up.

“Oh, that’s probably Michael wondering where I am, I should-” Tilly pointed to the door.

Jett nodded and waved a hand.

“Go, I’ll be fine. I can probably get Pollard to take me off duty tomorrow.”

She’d just sit around here a bit longer. Listen to the night shift’s sounds, and drink her cold tea. Sometimes that was exactly the place to find peace on this ship.

Tilly got up quietly, straightened her uniform, and smiled at her.

“Good night, Commander.”

Jett watched her leave.

Then went back to staring at the light’s reflection in the surface of her tea. She sighed.

Yeah, she could go from here.

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on [tumblr](http://frubeto.tumblr.com).


End file.
